Curry Zawa Kaoru's Creative Counseling - Too Many Reversed Pairings? What's Right is Not Determined by Numbers and There is No Right Answer Anyway

"There are so many reverse ships that I'm not sure of my interpretations anymore."

Hello, dear Curry Zawa. I always enjoy reading your column.

I'm a fanfiction writer and fujoshi with a renewed passion for the so-called past genres. Recently, I can't help but ponder about the existence of reverse pairings and ask myself if my interpretation of things is mistaken. It seems that there are a lot of people who are shipping reverse pairings, so I often find myself stepping on landmines ー which is why I've been blocking those works and muting their keywords. However, when I recall the things I have seen, I am worried that my interpretation of things could be wrong. Personally, I think reverse pairings definitely clash with the story and characters of the original work, but since there are so many supporters of the cause out there, I can't help but feel a bit blue. I want to believe in my own interpretation from the bottom of my heart and continue to create fanfictions of my OTP, but how?

I would appreciate your advice.

Reverse pairings.
(Defined as the top/bottom of a pairing in same-sex ships being “reversed” when compared what the shipper likes. In Japan and other parts of Asia, ship names are often not considered to be interchangeable, as it denotes who is top (left) and bottom (right). Fandom folks in the east get very attached to their top/bottom preference for a specific ship and go to great lengths to avoid seeing their ideal flipped. This includes blocking and muting tags that may have reversed ships in the results, as well as blocking users who suggest a top/bottom be reversed.)

They're one of those mythological creatures that often pop up before the shippers of fixed pairings. Although these shippers are careful not to say it out loud, they actually tend to question the other faction's sense of taste: "Did you even see the original work? How the hell did you get to that? Do you need your vision checked?"

Yet, most people know that there's no point in protesting and that if there's something they don't like, they should just not look at it. So like you, they try and protect themselves by blocking works and muting keywords or even use tags and warnings to keep the reverse-pairing people away.

The way things work is through a bunch of secret agreements that came about naturally through history repeating itself. There is no law that says, "A person who fails to indicate his or her preferred pairing will be fined up to five grand and imprisoned for three years" or "Anyone who even remotely supports reverse pairings will be fined."

Sometimes, you order a canon pairing and you get something else. Like when you're at a simple restaurant and order bacon-wrapped asparagus, but they end up bringing you stir-fried asparagus with some chunks of bacon mixed in.

Because the ingredients are the same, this kind of accident often happens: you are looking for your OTP and end up experiencing close encounters of the reversed kind.

Think about the real world: how many different "Stranger A x Stranger B" pairings are out there? Most couples have nothing to do with you so you don't get to have a say about them. Still, if you spot a couple of strangers French kissing on the other side of the road as you frolic down the street, maybe in a really good mood and excited about seeing Demon Slayer: Infinity Train for the 178th time, wouldn't you find yourself thinking "Are you for real?!" and hope they get out of your sight ASAP?

If the couples of strangers French kissing on the other side of the road were to start growing and growing, it'd be only natural to wonder if you're the one in the wrong and lose confidence in your own common sense and sensitivity. The same is more likely to happen the more reverse pairings grow in popularity.

I think this is a good analogy for being annoyed at the sight of reverse pairings, getting heartbroken at the sheer number of them, and then having your own worldview shaken to the core.

If there is no official answer, then we're just mass hallucinating

First, let's keep in mind that righteousness is not determined by numbers.

For example, in Asakusa, you can find a famous sculpture representing a certain beer company.

Even though 99% of people who see it (according to research by the company) see it as a "golden poop", it's actually a flame. That's the correct answer.

Regardless of how many people saw the original work and thought "This is bacon-wrapped asparagus," unless a pairing is canon and governed by official rules, then we're all fantasizing the same way and living out a large-scale collective hallucination.

In other words, there is no such thing as a "correct answer" unless the official answer has been given.

Even if your OTP is canon, when you write a story that is not present in the original work, it means that it will be different from the original work.
If you wanted to write a "correct" story that is exactly the same as the original, you would have to copy the original and if that's the case, your creation would have no value whatsoever as fan fiction. I mean, at that point why not just read the original?

Let's start from the premise that fan work is all wrong. Wondering if your interpretations are mistaken in a world where everyone is wrong is like having a naked meet-up in front of the Hachiko Exit in Shibuya and begin to wonder whether your nipples have a weird shape.

What's weird was having a naked meet-up in front of Hachiko in the first place.

Fan work is not a contest of right and wrong, but a fantasy where half of the people wonder if they're hallucinating, and the other half reassures them that "hallucinating is so much fun!". The latter is winning.

If the large number of reverse pairings popping up recently is frustrating to you, your argument shouldn't be that they definitely clash with the story, but rather you should get into the swing of things by shoving more of your preferred pairings into your mind.

Take the obsession with being right and turn it into creativity

When it comes to one's own interpretation of their OTP, I understand the desire to be right, even while knowing all too well that everything is just a delusion.

I think it is healthy for otaku, especially creative otaku, to think that their own interpretation is the most correct.

I'm more worried about people who leave the interpretation of their favorite characters and couples up to others.

Miyuki Nakajima sings it: "Don't leave your interpretation to the reverse-pairing shippers who would be happy to see you disappear."

It's important to believe that your interpretation is the correct one, but don't try to get others to accept it, or to make it the official correct interpretation.

I mean, technically you could do that, but you would also have to pull a Misery and lock up the original author to force them to write whatever you like. That's madness.

Normally, such madness should be kept within the confines of one's own mind, but it can be released through creativity.

If Annie Wilkes in Misery had said, "If the author doesn't write, I will write instead," rather than imprisoning him and coercing him to do as she wished, and had thrown that kind of madness into her creative writing, there is a good chance that she would have become a best-selling author.

It's just too bad that she wasn't a creative writing geek, and that she didn't have a pixiv account.

For outsiders, "creation" is nothing but insanity, involving drawing many frames on a completely blank sheet of paper, repeating it for dozens of pages, and laying out tens of thousands of words.

And the fact that y'all do it while working a job is a level of insanity that would make even Akagi blush.

Furthermore, the fact that you can make people happy and call you "God" instead of "monster" or "criminal" by showing your insanity in the shape of creativity is what I call a miracle.

You have all the ingredients to make this miracle happen: the crazy feelings towards your OTP, the skill to create, and the power to make it happen. The fact that you're using that power to deny your own sensibilities and to be aggressive towards reverse-pairing shippers, saying that reverse pairings absolutely clash with the story, is a waste that would make the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle crowd shudder.

When you write a story about your OTP, doesn't it increase the number of total works about your OTP by one? That much is clear.

Asking someone to write more works about your OTP and hoping for reverse-pairing works to go away is just crazy.
Before all that, why don't you help make up a number?
If you do this, you may be able to bring light back into the eyes of the people who have been relentlessly searching for works about your OTP. Some people may even follow after you to keep up the momentum.

Whenever you feel sad because your OTP's fandom doesn't look too lively, remember that you have the power to breathe life into it yourself!

↑ Feel free to send your troubles in languages other than Japanese too.

Curry Zawa Kaoru
Born in 1982. Unemployed. Her works include Kremlin (Kodansha), Makeru Gijutsu (Kodansha), and Busu no Honkai (Ohta Publishing). Her hobby is egosearching.
pixiv
Twitter